According to Aristotle, living beings, ousiai (substances is a misleading translation from the Latin) are formed matter. Form, eidos, and matter, hule, are inseparable.

Joe Sachs explains it this way:

But being-at-work is what Aristotle says the form is, and the potency, or straining toward being-at-work is the way he characterizes material.

Aristotle rejects the idea that forms are patterns (Metaphysics 991a-b).

With regard to telos Sachs says:

Every being is an end in itself, and the word telos, that we translate as end, means completion.

What you described here is a purported soft problem of consciousness, which would, indeed, be expected (under physicalism) to be explained eventually (or at least possibly) by science. However, the hard problem is metaphysics proper. — Bob Ross

In Chalmers own words, from "The Hard Problem of Consciousness":

The hard problem of consciousness is the problem of experience. When we think and perceive, there is a whir of information- processing, but there is also a subjective aspect. As Nagel (1974) has put it, there is something it’s like to be a conscious organism. This subjective aspect is experience. When we see, for example, we experience visual sensations: the felt quality of redness, the experience of dark and light, the quality of depth in a visual field. Other experiences go along with perception in different modalities: the sound of a clarinet, the smell of mothballs. Then there are bodily sensations, from pains to orgasms; mental images that are conjured up internally; the felt quality of emotion, and the experience of a stream of conscious thought. What unites all of these states is that there is something it’s like to be in them. All of them are states of experience.

It is undeniable that some organisms are subjects of experience. But the question of how it is that these systems are subjects of experience is perplexing. Why is it that when our cognitive systems engage in visual and auditory information- processing, we have visual or auditory experience: the quality of deep blue, the sensation of middle C? How can we explain why there is something it’s like to entertain a mental image, or to experience an emotion? It is widely agreed that experience arises from a physical basis, but we have no good explanation of why and how it so arises. Why should physical processing give rise to a rich inner life at all? It seems objectively unreasonable that it should, and yet it does.

How is the data transmitted to us if not physically?

Think of a vivid dream you have had ... — Bob Ross

This example works against your claim. If I am anesthetized I do not dream. Signals in the nervous system are blocked.

I'll put it this way: there can be matter without mind but not mind without matter.

Do you think the mind is a product of such physical interactions? — Wayfarer

I am not able to give a full blown theory of mind, but will say that I think there is more to it than just physical interactions.

I am unsure as to what you mean here: could you please elaborate? The hard problem of consciousness is absolutely a metaphysical problem, as it pertains solely to metaphysics and has nothing to do with science. — Bob Ross

The question of why and how biological functions give rise to experience has everything to do with science! Blocking such inquiry because it does not fit your metaphysical assumptions is the metaphysical, that is, conceptual problem.

What assumptions? — Bob Ross

Start with the title of this thread.

Philosophy of mind is metaphysics ... — Bob Ross

Metaphysical questions are raised in the philosophy of mind, but if your metaphysics excludes scientific inquiry then it is a dead end. It is embodied minds that we must deal with, and so science is not merely a "supplement". It is fundamental to the inquiry. We do not have to take a stand on physicalism. We do not have to decide whether or not mental states are physical states, but we should not exclude the physical organism out of some metaphysical conviction.

... science should not be in the business of ontology ... — Bob Ross

The question of being is a philosophical question, but that does not mean that science, which deals with actual beings, is excluded from ontological inquiry. Although the term had yet to be invented, Aristotle is a good example of how one does not exclude the other but form a whole.

Firstly, again, we don’t experience that the world is physical either ... — Bob Ross

Right, we don't experience that the world is physical, our experience includes things that are physical.

... we infer it from the data — Bob Ross

How is the data transmitted to us if not physically?

The argument is developed that it is the mind which picks out and differentiates things, attributes features to them and idenfities how they interact, and so on. — Wayfarer

And the counter-argument is that because things are different they interact in different ways. We can observe this and describe this but these interactions occur whether we identify them or not.

The larger argument is that consciousness continuously structures experience this way ... — Wayfarer

The pattern formed by three pennies is different than an object with three spikes that latches on to the three receptors of another object. So, yes, we make connections but it does not follow that things do not have structure and are not connected to other things based on their structures. Structural biology is a good example. At various levels living organisms have structure. Consciousness can identify these structures but consciousness does not make them. If they did not have these structures there would not be living organisms.

I question whether Descartes is trying to escape solipsism as you described — Paine

It is not that he is trying to escape solipsism but if all he knows is the content of his mind he has, so to speak, painted himself into a solipsistic corner.

You haven't addressed the argument, — Wayfarer

I am addressing this claim:

Objects in the unobserved universe have no shape — Charles Pinter, Mind and the Cosmic Order

That is simply not true. It is trivially obvious unless observed we cannot know or say what that shape is, but shape is intrinsic to stones and the COVID virus and countless other things. We observe that things fit together based on their shape, or move as they do because of their shape, or interact with other things because of their shape, but if they didn't the world would be nothing like it is. You might object that we could not know or say that anything is if not perceived, but this gets things backwards. There would be nothing to perceive if nothing existed.

What idealism, analytic or transcendental, is drawing attention to, is that the mind creates the framework within which our judgements about the stone — Wayfarer

The stone either moves along with the current or not. This happens whether we observe it or not. Whether or not it happens depends on its shape. In another example:

According to the NIH

SARS-CoV-2 particles are spherical and have proteins called spikes protruding from their surface. These spikes latch onto human cells, then undergo a structural change that allows the viral membrane to fuse with the cell membrane.

We are able to describe this shape based on observation, but the shape is independent of observation and judgment.

From that starting point of what will allow him to escape his isolation, the existence of God provides a possibility that 'objective reality' does not. — Paine

A self-imposed isolation that only arose only because, as he said at the start of the first meditation:

I needed – just once in my life – to demolish everything completely and start again from the foundations.

In order to do this he says he will withhold consent from beliefs that are not completely certain and indubitable. So for the purpose of rejecting all his opinions, he must find in each of them at least some reason for doubt.

In the ordinary course of his daily life no such doubt arises. Put differently, the need for complete certainty and indubitability is an unnatural requirement. He creates a problem he may not be able to solve. Positing God as an innate idea, rather than being an escape from solipsism, further isolates him.

Toward the end of the third meditation he says:

The only remaining alternative is that my idea of God is innate in me, just as the idea of myself is innate in me.

But both that he is and what he is are conclusions he arrives at through reason.

Toward the beginning of the second meditation he asks:

Isn’t there a God (call him what you will) who gives me the thoughts I am now having? But why do I think this, since I might myself be the author of these thoughts?

Toward the end of the first meditation he says:

So I shall suppose that some malicious, powerful, cunning demon has done all he can to deceive me – rather than this being done by God, who is supremely good and the source of truth.

This malicious god (call him what you will) cannot be the cause of his idea of himself. Descartes is the author of this thought. Can he not also be the author of the opposite of this thought, of a god who does not deceive but is supremely good and the source of truth? If he supposes the one then why can he not suppose its opposite?

You say:

It is not only that "I did not give this idea of God to myself" but I need the idea of God to accept what is given in experience. — Paine

Does he? He makes two claims. First:

But what about when I was considering something simple and straightforward in arithmetic or geometry, for example that two plus three makes five? Didn’t I see these things clearly enough to accept them as true? Indeed, the only reason I could find for doubting them was this: Perhaps some God could have made me so as to be deceived even in those matters that seemed most obvious.

If he has no reason to suppose there is a god determined to deceive him, he has no reason to doubt that two plus three makes five. And no reason to rely on any god at all:

Also, since I have no evidence that there is a deceiving God, and don’t even know for sure that there is a God at all, the reason for doubt that depends purely on this supposition of a deceiving God is a very slight and theoretical one.

Second:

Now it is obvious by the natural light that the total cause of something must contain at least as much reality as does the effect. For where could the effect get its reality from if not from the cause?

Truth determined by natural light is not truth revealed by God. But what does the natural light reveal about God. According to the natural light the total cause of something must contain at least as much reality as does the effect. Is this indubitable? Consider the tipping point. "Wetness" is not the cause of water being wet. A molecule of water is not wet. It is only where there is enough molecules of water that it becomes wet.

And which stone would that be? 'Oh, it doesn't matter - any stone.' But 'any stone' is an abstraction - and abstraction is still dependent on the matrix of conceptual thought. — Wayfarer

We can be more specific. We meet on the bank of the Concord River where Thoreau hunted for rocks for his collection. We find two stones, formed millions of years ago, one smooth and round, the other rough and jagged. We place them in the river and watch. The smooth stone will be carried along by the current, the jagged one will catch and snag. Although we observe what happens, it does not follow that the stones do not have a shape unless observed. It is because of their shape that one is carried along and the other snags.

I am not merely claiming that physicalism hasn’t explained mentality but, rather, that it can’t. — Bob Ross

It is merely a claim. It is not a theoretical or metaphysical issue, but an actual practical one. Your metaphysical assumptions are an impediment.

That is a metaphysical claim (specifically a physicalist claim), not science proper (i.e., physics in the tradition, Aristotelian sense). Nowadays, due to the age of enlightenment and modernism, we tend to smuggle metaphysics into ‘science’ without batting an eye. — Bob Ross

This is nonsense. First, Aristotle's physics rests on its own metaphysical assumptions. Second, if you want to hamstring science by requiring it to adhere to the authority of Aristotle, you are too late. If Aristotle were alive today his physics would look quite different.

it is due to a careful consideration of the possible metaphysical theories and finding it the most parismonous. — Bob Ross

So, first you fault science for smuggling in metaphysics and then appeal to metaphysical theories. The fact of the matter is that advances being made in neuroscience do not get tangled up in metaphysical questions of substance monism, dualism, pluralism.

Are you essentially arguing for ontological agnosticism? — Bob Ross

No. I am arguing that the claim that the universe is experiential in essence is, as I said, not something we experience or know. Speculative ontology is not something I take seriously beyond its limited entertainment value.

Moreover, even though the reality that I am considering in my ideas is merely objective reality, I ought not on that account to suspect that there is no need for the same reality to be formally in the causes of these ideas, but that it suffices for it to be in them objectively. — Descartes, Third Meditation, translated by Donald A Cress, pg 28

So, the reality is he has this idea, that is, an image in his mind. As he says:

When ideas are considered solely in themselves and not taken to be connected to anything else, they can’t be false ...

Objectively, that is, as objects of the mind, his having these ideas cannot be false. But:

All that is left – the only kind of thought where I must watch out for mistakes – are judgments. And the mistake they most commonly involve is to judge that my ideas resemble things outside me.

There is no way to verify that the idea does resemble something that has a formal mode of being or reality. But, he claims:

eventually some first idea must be reached whose cause is a sort of archetype that contains formally all the reality that is in the idea merely objectively. — Descartes, Third Meditation, translated by Donald A Cress, pg 28

This conclusion is questionable. From the Cottingham translation:

And how could the cause give reality to the effect unless it first had that reality itself? Two things follow from this: that something can’t arise from nothing, and that what is more perfect – that is, contains in itself more reality – can’t arise from what is less perfect. And this is plainly true not only for ‘actual’ or ‘intrinsic’ reality (as philosophers call it) but also for the representative reality of ideas – that is, the reality that a idea represents.

Is it true that what is more perfect cannot arise from what is less perfect? We are told that the triangle we draw is never a perfect triangle. A perfect triangle would be one that does not contain any of the defects of the one the drawing is supposed to be a representative of. It is from imperfection that we get the idea of perfection. In more general terms, it is from absence, lack or want, from the desire to have more or be more, that we get the idea of completion and satisfaction, of perfection.

We can form no meaningful idea of what exists in the absence of the order that the mind brings to reality. — Wayfarer

I agree, but I don't think it follows that:

Objects in the unobserved universe have no shape, color or individual appearance, because shape and appearance are created by minds. — Charles Pinter, Mind and the Cosmic Order

A stone carried along in a river will either continue on downstream or get stuck if it bumps up against some other object or objects depending on its shape.

There is an implicit endorsement of scientific realism in this. Analytic idealism is not a realist philosophy in that sense. — Wayfarer

But that does not answer the question.

Thanks for posting the line about hats and coats which is a crucially important topic, which I am particularly interested in — Manuel

I thought of you when I quoted it. You had mentioned it before but couldn't remember where you read it

If I had to guess, when we just look at something, what we literally see with our eyes are colours and shapes and distances, but we do not judge what we see with our eyes, but with our minds: this the shape I am currently looking at, which is grey, elongated and thin, is actually a flexible lamp. — Manuel

What would someone who had never seen a lamp see? In the old Yankee Magazine they would post a picture in each issue of some old object someone found. The question was, "what is it?" Which meant, what was its purpose, what was it used for. Of course, someone who did not know the answer might use it for some other purpose. What they see, I would argue, is not something other than what they did with it.

More thoughts on Descartes "I"

In the Synopsis he says, parenthetically:

(But here it should be noted in passing that I do not deal at all with sin, i.e. the error which is committed in pursuing good and evil, but only with the error that occurs in distinguishing truth from falsehood ...)

The omission of sin from a discussion of what a human self is of utmost significance. Beliefs such as being born of sin, original sin, and redemption from sin are of central importance to the Christian teachings he claims to be supporting.

In the Second Meditation he says;

But this ‘I’ that must exist – I still don’t properly understand what it is; so I am at risk of confusing it with something else, thereby falling into error in the very item of knowledge that I maintain is the most certain and obvious of all.

The cause of this fall is nothing more an improper understanding of what he is. In the story of "the Fall" in Genesis, gaining knowledge man becomes like the gods. (Genesis 3:22) But the serpent already knew this and part of his enticement of Eve to eat of the tree of knowledge for this reason (3:5) But in the Genesis story immortality is forbidden. Christianity grants the immortality of the soul. In the Synopsis Descartes says:

But since some people may perhaps expect arguments for the immortality of the soul in this section, I think they should be warned here and now that I have tried not to put down anything which I could not precisely demonstrate.

He cannot prove the immortality of the soul, but what separates man from the gods is immortality, and so, with immortality man is not just like the gods but is a god. Descartes is no less subtle than the serpent.

The universal mind is not experiencing itself directly like we experience the world but, arguably under Kastrup’s view, it is experiencing itself via us (as we are alters of that mind). — Bob Ross

So we are back to my original question:

If the nature of reality is essentially experiential does this mean that prior to experiential animals there was no reality or is this a teleological claim or has there always been something that is capable of experiencing? — Fooloso4

In response you said:

Under analytical idealism, the entirety of reality is fundamentally mind and is thusly conscious: not just animals. — Bob Ross

But now it seems that in order for there to be experience there must be us or something like us. If so, then prior in time to such animals the nature of reality could not have been experiential. There was nothing capable of experiencing.

In order for Kastrup's assertion to qualify for a theory of reality it must explain how animals like us, capable of experiencing, came to be in a universe like ours full of things to be experienced.

The argument is that we cannot account for consciousness by the reductive physicalist method ... — Bob Ross

The fact that we cannot now explain consciousness does not mean that there is not a physical explanation. This is an old story in the history of science. There have been naysayers at every step in the development of science who have argued that something cannot be done prior to it being done. Neuroscience is a relatively new science. This looks like nothing more than a sophisticated version of God of the gaps.

Science only tells us how things behave, not what they fundamentally are. — Bob Ross

According to the Standard Model of Particle Physics there are fundamental or elementary particles of matter.

I am not simply assuming the world out there is mind because I am mind: that is a bad argument. — Bob Ross

You are assuming that there is mind, but what do we know of mind that is not based on our mind? You are arguing that our consciousness cannot be explained unless consciousness is fundamental and irreducible.

What do you mean? My point is that we use reason to infer, based off of experience, things which are not a part of our experience (and this is perfectly valid). — Bob Ross

Based off of our experience you infer that reality is essentially experiential. Like from like. Put differently, based off the human mind you infer that there is mind itself.

Analytical idealism is not the best theory simply because it is a reductive methodololgical approach — Bob Ross

Your claim was:

It is the best metaphysical theory I have heard (so far) for what reality fundamentally is. — Bob Ross

There is nothing in reality that necessitates substance monism; however, the best theories are the one’s that use occam’s razor: otherwise, theories explode into triviality. — Bob Ross

The best theories do not misuse Occam's razor. Monism is not better than dualism or pluralism simply because it seems simpler to have one thing rather than many. Unless the theory can explain the whole of reality in terms of this one thing then Occam's razor does not apply.

It may be that sooner or later we run up against the limits of human knowledge. It may be that the deeper we dig the more there is to find. This is not trivial.

I think we can know things without directly experiencing them. — Bob Ross

The claim that:

... the universe is experiential in essence.

is not something we can experience but it is also not something we know. Whether it is something that can be known is questionable.

The problem with your argument is that it assumes you can get outside your understanding of the world to see it as it truly is, without any observer. — Wayfarer

This is why I asked about the "something" that has always been capable of observing.

If it is true that we cannot get outside our understanding of the world, then this extends to our understanding of a disembodied observer.

Kastrup would say that our perception is simply representing the world as if it was a certain way. The physical world is representation, not the thing itself. — schopenhauer1

I would say that the physical world is represented. It is not the thing itself, but both what is represented and experience are of something.

Is the assumption that there is something that is experienced and something that is represented mistaken?

Descartes gets his "clear and distinct ideas" from his work in optics, — Manuel

Interesting observation, but how well does it fit with his example of the wax? For example:

When the wax is in front of us, we say that we see it, not that we judge it to be there from its colour or shape; and this might make me think that knowledge of the wax comes from what the eye sees rather than from the perception of the mind alone. But this is clearly wrong, as the following example shows.

...

If I look out of the window and see men crossing the square, as I have just done, I say that I see the men themselves, just as I say that I see the wax; yet do I see any more than hats and coats that could conceal robots? I judge that they are men.


...

Surely, I am aware of my own self in a truer and more certain way than I am of the wax, and also in a much more distinct and evident way.

...

As I came to perceive the wax more distinctly by applying not just sight and touch but other considerations, all this too contributed to my knowing myself even more distinctly, because whatever goes into my perception of the wax or of any other body must do even more to establish the nature of my own mind.

Also, I don't think his conflation of affective states with thinking helps to clarify anything. — Janus

This should be looked at against the background of the tradition he is rejecting. Aristotle regarded such things as being related to the soul, but since Descartes regards the soul as a thinking thing these activities are classified as kinds of thinking.

until you begin to ask the further questions as to just what this entity is, if it is claimed to be anything more than the whole organism. — Janus

Yes, I agree. He will have more to say about the whole organism. But I don't think a full description or complete knowledge of himself is his main concern. He says enough to serve his rhetorical purpose.

Unless what he means by "perceives clearly and distinctly" is mental events of all kinds. — frank

There is a shift in this paragraph from the certainty of being a thinking thing that perceives to the certainty of "whatever" it is that he perceives clearly and distinctly.

Things are manifestations of experience?
— Fooloso4

Yes — schopenhauer1

Can you explain how that works?

It isn't evident that everything is made of a couple dozen whizzing particles, but here we are. — schopenhauer1

We have, however, made considerable progress in explaining things physically. The claim that things are experience (esse est percipi?) does not explain anything. Where do we go from there? How do we distinguish between experiences? Is the dream of getting hit by a train as real as getting hit by a train? Will the dream train get me where I need to go?

So, to answer your question, there was a reality before any animals (as science suggests). — Bob Ross

Does science suggest that there was mind experiencing itself experiencing? Or that there is something experienced that is not experience? That there is a difference between experience and what is experienced?

Given our limited experience how can we move beyond our experience to something prior to it?

I am not sure I am completely following ... — Bob Ross

There is a logical leap from our being experiential to the universe being experiential. We have no experience of the experience of the universe or of it being experiential. It seems to be a form of anthropomorphism. The ancient assumption of like to like. Microcosm and macrocosm.

The universe is like us. We have mind, therefore the universe has mind. We have experience therefore the universe has experience.

What do we know of subjectivity beyond the personal and interpersonal?

A lot. I can reasonably infer that I was born and before that my mother and father existed (for example). — Bob Ross

This is still within the world of human experience.

It is the best metaphysical theory I have heard (so far) for what reality fundamentally is ... it posits that we should reduce everything fundamentally to mind — Bob Ross

It is the best because the best theory must be reductive? That there must be a single something that is fundamental? That we are left with either something mental or physical?

and claims that we can do so while adequately fitting the data of experience. — Bob Ross

See my comment above regarding experience. We have no experience of something fundamental. That there must be something fundamental is merely an assumption that rests fundamentally on our desire that the universe to be intelligible to us. And so we give it limits, a starting point, a terminus, to fit our limits.

It is one method of answering the hard problem without going into granularity. — schopenhauer1

I don't see it as an answer but as a bald assertion without sufficient evidence.

But plenum of experience with which things are manifestations becomes more interesting — schopenhauer1

Things are manifestations of experience? Experience of what? Experience? Mind? It is evident that things that have mind have experience but it is not evident that what they experience is mind or experience and not things.

According to Kastrup's Essentia website

Analytic Idealism is a theory of the nature of reality that maintains that the universe is experiential in essence.

If the nature of reality is essentially experiential does this mean that prior to experiential animals there was no reality or is this a teleological claim or has there always been something that is capable of experiencing?

Given our limited experience how can we move beyond our experience to something prior to it? Kastrup claims:

That does not mean that reality is in your or our individual minds alone, but instead in a spatially unbound, transpersonal field of subjectivity of which we are segments.

What do we know of subjectivity beyond the personal and interpersonal?

The claim is made that:

... the notion that nature is essentially mental—is the best explanatory model we currently have.

Is it? In what way is this claim an explanation? Does it merely assert the very thing it is to explain?

The tight connection between 'not knowing' and being 'unimaginable' is sort of a concession to Aristotle saying, "thinking requires the use of images." — Paine

As quoted from the third meditation in my response to Janus, he distinguishes between thoughts that are images and others that are:

something more than merely the likeness of that thing.

When, for example, I will or am afraid, this is not the likeness of willing or being afraid. It is not something I imagine. I can, of course, imagine what it is like to be afraid, but when I do so I rely on a memory or feeling of when I was afraid.

Does reason give us a clear and distinct idea of the "I"? — Janus

He does say:

...what is true and known – namely my own self.

Are you saying he does not think it does or that you do not think it does? In the third meditation he says:

I am a thing that thinks, i.e., that doubts, affirms, denies, understands some things, is ignorant of many others, wills, and refuses. This thing also imagines and has sensory perceptions ... That lists everything that I truly know, or at least everything I have, up to now, discovered that I know. Now I will look more carefully to see whether I have overlooked other facts about myself.

In what follows there are a few other things he mentions. His continued existence does not depend on himself, that he is finite, and that he has innate ideas.

He goes on to make a distinction between kinds of thoughts. Some are ideas - images or pictures of things, and others are such things as volitions, emotions, and judgments:

First, if I am to proceed in an orderly way I should classify my thoughts into definite kinds, and ask which kinds can properly be said to be true or false. Some of my thoughts are, so to speak, images or pictures of things – as when I think of a man, or a chimera, or the sky, or an angel, or God – and strictly speaking these are the only thoughts that should be called ‘ideas’.

Other thoughts have more to them than that: for example when I will, or am afraid, or affirm, or deny, my thought represents some particular thing but it also includes something more than merely the likeness of that thing. Some thoughts in this category are called volitions or emotions, while others are called judgments.

Seeing the act of thinking as a list of activities does not reflect the problem of description that I commented upon upthread. By speaking of an 'indescribable part of myself which cannot be pictured by the imagination', it seems to me that Descartes is pointing at something that is always there but is not understood. — Paine

Here is John Cottingham's translation of this passage:

But I still can’t help thinking that bodies – of which I form mental images and which the senses investigate – are much more clearly known to me than is this puzzling ‘I’ that can’t be pictured in the imagination. It would be surprising if this were right, though; for it would be surprising if I had a clearer grasp of things that I realize are doubtful, unknown and foreign to me – ·namely, bodies – than I have of what is true and known – namely my own self. But I see what the trouble is: I keep drifting towards that error because my mind likes to wander freely, refusing to respect the boundaries that truth lays down.

According to this translation it is not some mysterious part of himself, but the 'I' itself. Why does he say it can't be pictured in the imagination. I think it because the imagination will not give us a clear and distinct idea of the 'I'. But reason does.

Both translations are in agreement with regard to the formation of mental images of bodies.

Descartes was not sharply separating the domain of Reason as Kant did from the nature of things as they are in themselves. — Paine

Good point. In the second meditation Descartes says:

Rather, it is purely a perception by the mind alone – formerly an imperfect and confused one, but now clear and distinct because I am now concentrating carefully on what the wax consists in.

The "clear and distinct" perception of the wax is the result of reason. What is perceived is the wax's nature, as it is, not simply as it appears to us.

Two issues that Descartes will return to are introduced here. The first is the faculty of judgment:

Something that I thought I saw with my eyes, therefore, was really grasped solely by my mind’s faculty of judgment.

The second is the dependability of what is "clear and distinct".

For Descartes the faculty of judgment is concerned with the question of whether things are as they are perceived to be, or more radically, whether they are at all outside the mind. But since we cannot make this comparison the problem of modern skepticism arises. It is here that "clear and distinct" ideas play a central role. Kant accepts the existence of things outside the mind, but rejects the question of their nature, that is, what they are in themselves.

Maybe the thinking here is not a determination as it is often portrayed to be. — Paine

Can you explain what you mean?

So, we rely on reason to gain knowledge, but then what is reason? — Manuel

For Descartes mathematics is the model of reason. Just as in mathematics, if one does not mistake a mistake then everyone, whatever their beliefs and opinions may be, will arrive at the same conclusion.

It's not so clear to me that the imagination must be nature be misleading. — Manuel

It is not that it must be misleading by nature, but that like the senses it can be misleading. It is not, by itself, a reliable source of knowledge.

Contrary to Aristotle, Descartes claims that we do not see things is the world, but rather representations in the mind.

This leads to the problem of judgment, of whether the things we perceive accurately represent the things they are perceptions of.

Note how often he uses the term 'imagine' in the second meditation:

Starting with the soul he says:

If I gave any thought to what this soul was like, I imagined it to be something thin and filmy– like a wind or fire or ether – permeating my more solid parts.

He goes on to say a few paragraphs later:

I am not that structure of limbs and organs that is called a human body; nor am I a thin vapour that permeates the limbs – a wind, fire, air, breath, or whatever I imagine ...

This can be read either as:
1) the soul is not as I imagined it to be
2) I only imagine I have a soul

He continues the sentence:

... for I have supposed all these things to be nothing because I have supposed all bodies to be nothing.

That he is not or does not have a body is something that he supposes for the sake of his meditation. Put differently, that he does not have a body is subject to doubt.

Compare the following statements:

That makes imagination suspect, for while I know for sure that I exist, I know that everything relating to the nature of body – including imagination – could be mere dreams; so it would be silly for me to say ‘I will use my imagination to get a clearer understanding of what I am’ ...

Well, then, what am I? A thing that thinks. What is that? A thing that doubts, understands, affirms, denies, wants, refuses, and also imagines and senses.

He is a thing that imagines:

But the ‘I’ who imagines is also this same ‘I’. For even if (as I am pretending) none of the things that I imagine really exist, I really do imagine them, and this is part of my thinking.

That he imagines cannot be doubted, but what he imagines can be. He says that imagination is related to the nature of body, but also that to imagine is to think.

The same holds for sensing:

I certainly seem to see, to hear, and to be warmed. This cannot be false; what is called ‘sensing’ is strictly just this seeming, and when ‘sensing’ is understood in this restricted sense of the word it too is simply thinking.

On the positive side he is certain that he exists, certain that he thinks, and imagines, and senses. On the negative side, just as what he imagines and senses can be called into doubt, so too can what he thinks, for they are all part of his thinking. If what he thinks can be doubted, if even what he doubts can be doubted, is he then hopelessly lost is doubt? Will his certainty that he exists be sufficient to serve as his Archimedean point?

We should not overlook the following from the first paragraph of the second meditation:

Archimedes said that if he had one firm and immovable point he could lift the world ·with a long enough lever·; so I too can hope for great things if I manage to find just one little thing that is solid and certain.

The task of finding something that is certain is not simply a matter of Descartes finding something he can be certain of, that is, of alleviating his doubts. The one thing that is solid and certain will function as an Archimedean fulcrum with which he will reestablish the world on a new basis. The authority of the thinking I will displace that of Aristotle, "the Philosopher", and the Church.

Was reading over your conversation with Antony, and it is very interesting, and very much echoes Chomsky's interpretation of Descartes, which is that The Meditations were written, in a sense, so his physics would be taken seriously. — Manuel

In the thread "Philosophy is for questioning religion" the topic of esoteric philosophical writing came up. I quoted something from Descartes. This one below is more relevant to his physics:

In a letter to Mersenne, Descartes reveals:

...there are many other things in them; and I tell you, between ourselves, that these
six Meditations contain all the foundations of my physics. But that must not be
spread abroad, if you please; for those who follow Aristotle will find it more
difficult to approve them. I hope that [my readers] will accustom themselves
insensibly to my principles, and will come to recognize their truth, before
perceiving that they destroy those of Aristotle.
– René Descartes to Mersenne, January 28, 1641, Œuvres de Descartes,
3:297–98, quoted and translated by Hiram Caton in The Origin of
Subjectivity, 17

Quoted from here

it seems to me that Descartes was quite confident that we are thinking things, so I do not think he would let go of the notion of the immortality of the soul. — Manuel

The title of the first edition was " Meditations on First Philosophy in Which the Existence of God and the Immortality of the Soul Are Demonstrated". But the second edition, (the text cited in this thread) is "Meditations on First Philosophy in which are demonstrated the existence of God and the distinction between the human soul and the body". There is no mention of an immortal soul.

In the third meditation he says:

For a life-span can be divided into countless parts, each completely independent of the others, so that from my existing at one time it doesn’t follow that I exist at later times, unless some cause keeps me in existence – one might say that it creates me afresh at each moment.

In other words, the human soul is a created or contingent, or dependent substance. The continued existence of the soul depends on God.

Given your experience with the texts and Descartes, if you had to guess or even form a hypothesis, what interpretation would you lean in on? — Manuel

I am going to hold off on that until we have read more of the text.

There is an online appendix to Meltzer's Philosophy Between the Lines that consists of quotes, both ancient and modern, by and about philosophers.

The term has been used in different ways, but for a better idea of how it has been used in the western philosophical tradition. In simplest terms it means to appear to be saying one thing while saying another.

There are many quotes from and about the ancients, but it is not a practice that was limited to them.

Since there are a couple of current thread on Descartes I'll start with him:

Descartes writes to one of his more imprudent disciples:

Do not propose new opinions as new, but retain all the old terminology for
supporting new reasons; that way no one can find fault with you, and those who
grasp your reasons will by themselves conclude to what they ought to understand.
Why is it necessary for you to reject so openly the [Aristotelian doctrine of]
substantial forms? Do you not recall that in the Treatise on Meteors I expressly
denied that I rejected or denied them, but declared only that they were not
necessary for the explication of my reasons?
– René Descartes to Regius, January, 1642, Œuvres de Descartes, 3:491-
92, quoted and translated by Hiram Caton in “The Problem of Descartes’
Sincerity,” 363

David Hume (1711-1776):
[T]hough the philosophical truth of any proposition, by no means depends on its tendency
to promote the interests of society, yet a man has but a bad grace, who delivers a theory,
however true, which he must confess leads to a practice dangerous and pernicious. Why
rake into those corners of nature which spread a nuisance all around? Why dig up the
pestilence from the pit in which it is buried? The ingenuity of your researches may be
admired but your systems will be detested, and mankind will agree, if they cannot refute
them, to sink them at least in eternal silence and oblivion. Truths which are pernicious to
society, if any such there be, will yield to errors which are salutary and advantageous.
– David Hume, Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, 257-58 (9.2)
(emphasis in the original)

Encyclopedia of Diderot and d’Alembert (1751-1772):

EXOTERIC and ESOTERIC, adj. (History of Philosophy): The first of these words
signifies exterior, the second, interior. The ancient philosophers had a double doctrine;
the one external, public or exoteric; the other internal, secret or esoteric.
– “Exoteric and Esoteric,” Encyclopedia (translation mine)

[T]he condition of the sage is very dangerous: there is hardly a nation that is not soiled
with the blood of several of those who have professed it. What should one do then?
Must one be senseless among the senseless? No; but one must be wise in secret.
– Denis Diderot, “Pythagorism or Philosophy of Pythagoras,” Encyclopedia

The Encyclopedia not only frequently speaks of esotericism–and approvingly–but it also
practices it, as becomes clear from a letter of d’Alembert to Voltaire. The latter had been
complaining to d’Alembert about the timidity of some of the articles. He replies:
No doubt we have some bad articles in theology and metaphysics, but with
theologians as censors... I defy you to make them better. There are other articles,
less open to the light, where all is repaired. Time will enable people to
distinguish what we have thought from what we have said.
– Jean d’Alembert to Denis Diderot, July 21, 1757, Œuvres et
correspondances, 5:51 (translation mine; emphasis added)

Just what this means, Diderot makes clear in his article titled “Encyclopedia.” He is speaking
about the use of cross-references in the articles. This can be useful, he explains, to link articles on common subjects enabling their ideas to reinforce and build upon one another.
When it is necessary, [the cross-references] will also produce a completely
opposite effect: they will counter notions; they will bring principles into contrast;
they will secretly attack, unsettle, overturn certain ridiculous opinions which one
would not dare to insult openly....There would be a great art and an infinte
advantage in these latter cross-references. The entire work would receive from
them an internal force and a secret utility, the silent effects of which would
necessarily be perceptible over time. Every time, for example, that a national
prejudice would merit some respect, its particular article ought to set it forth
respectfully, and with its whole retinue of plausibility and charm; but it also ought
to overturn this edifice of muck, disperse a vain pile of dust, by cross-referencing
articles in which solid principles serve as the basis for the contrary truths. This
means of undeceiving men operates very promptly on good minds, and it operates
infallibly and without any detrimental consequence–secretly and without scandal–
on all minds. It is the art of deducing tacitly the boldest consequences. If these
confirming and refuting cross-references are planned well in advance, and
prepared skillfully, they will give an encyclopedia the character which a good
dictionary ought to possess: this character is that of changing the common manner
of thinking.
– Denis Diderot, “Encyclopedia,” Encyclopedia

Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914):
[Forbidden ideas] are different in different countries and in different ages; but wherever
you are, let it be known that you seriously hold a tabooed belief, and you may be
perfectly sure of being treated with a cruelty less brutal but more refined than hunting
you like a wolf. Thus the greatest intellectual benefactors of mankind have never dared,
and dare not now [in America, circa 1877], to utter the whole of their thought.
– Charles Sanders Pierce, “The Fixation of Belief,” Philosophical Writings, 20

What do we do with edge cases, such as plants or oysters? Do we assume some minimal intellect here or is it all sense? — Manuel

Is having a sense of something and making sense of something two different senses of sense?

What is the minimum requirement for minimal intellect?

Is intellect a property limited to individual organisms?

There is some interesting work being done on trees and communication networks.

Wittgenstein points to "seeing as" and "seeing aspects".